The Pirate Noble

This issue of Beadle & Adams' weekly (November 7, 1888) contains the serial "The Pirate Noble: A Romance of Love and Hatred on Sea and Shore" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham.

The narrative opens in Mississippi Sound near Biloxi and Pascagoula, introducing Gaston Grayhurst, an English nobleman who abandoned his inheritance to become a planter. His son Gordon, age ten, explores the mysterious Castle Moro, a decaying Spanish mansion recently occupied by the reclusive Monsieur Belgarde. After Gordon shoots and kills a slave playing ghost, he rescues a man from a capsized boat in the cove. The stranger, who grows visibly disturbed upon learning Gordon's identity and paternity, invites the boy to visit him secretly—weekly visits, to no one else. The installment ends with this stranger's cryptic intentions toward the Grayhurst heir unresolved.